Thinkings...

As I travel, I continue to ponder what happiness is and how to obtain it, and what obtaining it really means.

The past few days have been heavy going. We're in Cambodia now, and whilst in Phnom Penh we sort of had to do the not-so-nice historical bits, like the Killing Fields and S21. These two places left me a little bit lost for words, and all Steph and I could do was to walk around with our arms linked despite the heat and keep very very quiet. It's difficult to describe what happened without it losing some of the meaning - words can convey a lot, but at the end of the day they're still words. I'm always amazed how people can read the newspaper on the tube or over breakfast or anywhere, and gloss over figures like ''27 people killed in blast'' without balking at it. I know I'm probably over-sensitive, but when I read that I imagine my old class at school being entirely wiped out, or 27 family members. I've not had very many people I've known die - perhaps only 4 or 5 - but each one has shook me a little, and reminded me of my own mortality and the fragility of life. To say that there were thousands of people killed, or 450 all put into one grave the size of a room is something that breaks me, especially when I think that all of those deaths were unnecessary.

That's all a bit morbid, but really I came to share something happy. I've been mulling all of this over since Phnom Penh and wondering how a nation can even begin to recover from something like that, even though nations somehow do it all the time, over and over. Vietnam and Cambodia have both touched me in that, despite their histories, the people are amazingly positive, and always have a smile at the ready. Smiles count for a lot in my world. Last night I was chatting to a very lovely local girl I'd met here about some of this and she said that no matter what had happened in the past or anything, she had her friends and that counted for more than any money or anything at all. I questioned this - everyone needs a basic standard of living and that's not really possible with no money at all. She laughed at me and said, ''When I'm sad, I call my friends and we go for a walk together. If I need money, we'll go to the riverside. One of my friends will bring a bottle of wine, and we'll all sit down together and make a plan. If something's wrong in my family, I can talk with them. I can tell them anything and they'll share it as if it were their own problem." She said that Cambodia works so well because people all look after each other, whether they know them or not.

It's something we've seen a little of whilst here - in the streets people will stop and chat to you, just to see how you are and where you've come from. At first I was wary, thinking that everyone was trying to sell me something or distract me while a friend sneakily nicked my stuff, but I've been wrong more often than not. It's heartening that in the places where I've witnessed the scars from the darker sides of the human psyche, I've also been shown how much more people have to offer without expecting anything in return.